Here it is! The print version will be available in January, but here is the PDF of the magazine so you can read it online! You can also find the extended versions of the pieces mentioned in the magazine on our blog. Congratulations to all the writers whose contributions appear in the magazine, and thank you for a fantastic first issue.

According to the bartender, Shakespeare’s jazz club was always just an hour away from peak time. The bar wasn’t a seedy place. Calling it so would have been a compliment. At some point in the past, back when I was in my twenties and the world was in the fifties, the bar was seedy. It had now moved beyond seedy. It was just sad. I’m in my late fifties and the world has moved on to the nineties. What the nineties would be looked at as, I wasn’t entirely sure of. What I was sure of is that they wouldn’t be considered the Golden Age of Jazz. No one listened to jazz anymore, hell, this may have been the only place in the city that still had live music, but, again, it would be a stretch to call it live music. I would call it dead music, dead music in a dead bar. Continue reading →

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“Jesus Christ – Well, fuck you mom!” Matt puts down the phone and turns his back to the barn, walking a few steps out onto the gravel driveway. “That stupid bitch. I hate her!” he says.

It’s been an exceptionally wet summer, but today the sun, sky, and clouds are cooperating to paint quite the lovely scene. The view from the barn allows us to appreciate our day’s work. The grass covers the park in a uniform, evenly cut pattern. The ball field dirt looks level and smooth. The weeds around the playground have been pulled or trimmed. Even the birds are singing in admiration of the park’s beauty. Continue reading →

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He stood unmoving, waiting for fate to rescue him. Clarity struck him hard, it pushed him forward and let gravity do the rest. He did not move though. His body remained perfectly still, his clothes fluttered about him, torn to tatters by the claws of the wind, and the earth raced up to meet him. With every inch it advanced it grew faster, until finally it was racing towards him with such ferocity that it bent even light to its will.

You’ve heard it. The i-just-fucked-this-guy-and-he-doesn’t-remember-but-this-will-remain-one-of-the-most-significant-experiences-of-my-college-career poems. The he-filled-me-with-desire-as-his-skin-brushed-against-mine-and-i-lost-my-breath poems. Hell, you’ve written it. I’ve written it. And I will again. Soon. Very soon. Within a matter of a few pages actually. Those and the first-encounter-with-grief poems. I mean, let’s be serious. When you look at old poets, you know, the ones they bore you with before you’re actually able to appreciate them for how fucking beautiful their sounds are, they write about sex and death, too. It’s kind of a natural human thing. Sex enchants us, even after we’ve had it. Why else would erotica be so popular? I used to tell him that I didn’t need to read about someone else’s sex life because I had my own. Have. Different guy. But have. Continue reading →

I walked down the middle of the gray suburban street, looking left and right at every cute little house I passed. It was one of those newly constructed neighborhoods where all the houses looked pretty much the same. It always made me a little uneasy, going into another person’s house and having all the architecture be the same but the furniture different. The sky was a blue-gray, as though the color from the sky was leaking into the thick, fluffy clouds above my head. It felt dreary, but not in a sad way. It was cozy but at the same time cool, relaxing me in a way that just couldn’t happen on a warm day. Something about the clouds seemed strange, though; they were moving too fast. Continue reading →

You have until the end of Friday, November 21st to submit the stories, essays, and/or poems you’ve been working on in workshops throughout the semester for publication in our first issue of Inklings Magazine.

Submission requirements:
-You may submit more than one piece, but you must have discussed that piece in a workshop or submitted it to Inklings for feedback.
-Submissions may be up to 10 pages. We might publish the entire piece, or we might take a selection of a few pages, depending on the length of the piece.

It is not required, but you should consider including an author’s note with your submission in which you explain your writing process and your experience in the Inklings workshop.

Please email submissions or questions to larosent@colby.edu. We will notify you by Saturday, November 22 about whether we’ve selected your piece for publication.

Professor Debra Spark, who teaches creative writing at Colby College, is the author of four books of fiction, including her most recent books ThePretty Girl and Good for the Jews. She has published a number of short stories in AGNI, Esquire, The New York Times, Narrative, and other well known magazines. At Colby, she teaches a course titled Documentary Radio, so we thought it was most appropriate to upload a recording of our interview with her. Thanks again to Faiyaz Islam for interviewing her, and thanks to Professor Spark for sharing her time and wisdom!

Kathleen brought this piece to workshop a few weeks ago. The first version (top) is her revised draft; the second version (bottom) is the original she brought to workshop. This is her introduction/first chapter to a novel she’s working on. Continue reading →

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